Fasque House

Fasque is a mansion in Kincardineshire, Scotland situated near the village of Fettercairn.

Fasque, sometimes inaccurately known as Fasque House, has a name which comes from the Gaelic work "faskie" (meaning safety, or dwelling place) - and for reasons of potential tautology, "House" was never officially added to its title. The house was completed in 1809 and purchased in 1829 by Sir John Gladstone, 1st Baronet and father of William Gladstone, Prime Minister to Queen Victoria. [ [http://www.xs4all.nl/~josvg/scot/dundee04/dund0021.html Castles in Scotland: Fasque] ] A previous Fasque (the name itself being a baroque, eighteenth century corruption of the original Gaelic work) was built in around 1750 by the first Lord Ramsay, Alexander Burnett, roughly convert|50|yd|m north of the present site. This house was a charming if small mansion designed by Robert Adam. However, by 1790, the house was growing increasingly prone to damp, and was demolished only forty years after completion. The second, present Fasque was a far different affair to Adam's delicate original. It was, and is, a huge sandstone building, designed without the delicacy of the mid-18th century. The massive house took over ten years to construct, with contemporary guide books describing its central hallway being open to the elements as the world's largest double-spiral indoor staircase was being constructed at the back of the hall. It was completed in 1809, and was then taken possession of by the fourth Lord Ramsay, again an Alexander Burnett, who kept the house for 15 years (although he only ever lived on a cottage on the estate) before having to sell it on for debts. The structure remains relatively unchanged since its completion - although a third storey was added in 1830, the massive nut-and-bolt front door pillars were built in the 1840s, the drawing room was expanded in 1905, and some servant quarters were added before the beginning of the First World War. Innovative use of electricity meant that Fasque was possibly the first house in Scotland to be lit by electric lights, and had an electronic buzzer system as early as 1890. It was also noted for having innovative firefighting and health and safety equipment in the 1920s.

Provenance

In 1829, the house was sold for £80,000 to John Gladstone, a Liverpudlian merchant of Scottish extraction whose family (originally called Gledstanes) had been farmers in Biggar, before becoming wine merchants in Leith in the years following 1745. Following the death of their eldest daughter, the pious and saintly Anne in 1829 (which affected all the family very badly, especially the 19 year-old William) it took four years for the Gladstones to move up from their original house (the now-demolished Seaforth House on the shores of the Mersey). In the winter of 1833, John, his wife Anne McKenzie and their youngest daughter Helen (younger sister of then fledging MP, future Prime Minister William Gladstone) moved into Fasque for the first time. Their arrival coincided with one of the worst spells of weather ever recorded in Kincardineshire, with many of the trees to the north of the House (which had been planted originally in 1745) being blown down in high winds. The cold and the damp of the new house had a detrimental effect on Anne McKenzie Gladstone's health, and she died in 1835. Ten years later, in 1845, the Baronetcy of Fasque and Balfour was bestowed upon the elderly Sir John Gladstone, and to commemorate he built the Fasque Episcopalean Church in the grounds of the house, a church which is still used to this day. In its first decade, the Church also saw the burial of one of William Gladstone's offspring who died in childhood, and in the same year as its founding, Sir John was photographed in one of the earliest examples of a Daguerreotype.

In December 1851, Sir John Gladstone died, passing the house on to his oldest son, Thomas, the eldest brother of William. Thomas's sibling rivalry had been strong over the years (he had hated Eton, whereas William had thrived; his Parliamentary career had been a fitful ten years of starts and stops, especially in comparison to his younger brother's progression) but now, as the Second Baronet (and from 1876, Lord Lieutenant of Kincardineshire), Thomas Gladstone and his wife Louisa Fellows (a relative of Queen Victoria, and a distant relative of the 21st century writer Julian Fellows), thrived as they ran Fasque as an effective house for nearly 40 years, adding servants quarters to the building itself along with a school in the grounds. During that time, William Gladstone (who had come into possession of Hawarden Castle in north Wales, through his wife's family, the Glynns) visited his elder brother many times, and practiced his hobbies of walking and tree-felling across the moors of the estate (which had slowly expanded during Thomas's tenure to encompass convert|80000|acre|km2, bordering Balmoral to the north). Sir Thomas died in 1889, passing the Baronetcy on to his eldest son John, a bachelor soldier, who came home to run the estate with his sister Mary in the 1890s. After Thomas' death, William did not visit his nephew's estate again, and himself died in May 1898.

Fasque House remained a working home until 1932, when Lady Mary, who had survived her brother John by six years, passed on. At this point, Fasque House became semi-derilect, with much of the furniture covered with sheets, and rooms locked up for decades. The Estate itself operated as before, but the main house was empty. Eventually, the Baronetcy passed through various family lines to end up with the 7th Baronet, Sir William Gladstone, great-grandson of the famous prime minister, and a former Chief Scout, based at Hawarden Castle in Flintshire. In 1978, Sir William's younger brother, the noted naturalist Sir Peter Gladstone, re-decorated Fasque (apparently whitewashing almost every wall surface himself) and opened it to the public for the first time in the September of that year, partly capitalising on the then-current popularity of the TV show "Upstairs Downstairs". Fasque House remained open to summer visitors for over two decades, with the House's east wing almost entirely open to the public, and the west wing providing a home for Sir Peter's family. A large auction sale of items from the House gained much publicity when it was held in the grounds in 1997. Sir Peter died in 2000, with the Estate itself now being run by Charles Gladstone, son of Sir William, the 7th Baronet. In 2003, the House was closed to the public other than specially-arranged coach parties and Fasque's popular wedding service (both now discontinued).

In September 2007, Fasque House was put up for sale, with the main building selling for offers over £1.9 million. Nineteen other estate properties were also put on the market, at a collective price of just over £5 million. [cite web| url=http://strutt.waidev11.com/html2/php/property.php?id=EDN070120| title=Residential Property Search| publisher=Strutt & Parker| accessdate=2008-09-07] This sale did not effect the separate Fasque and Glen Dye Estate, which is still owned by the Gladstone family. [C. Michael Hogan, "History of Muchalls Castle", Lumina Tech Press, Aberdeen (2005)]

ee also

*Clan Burnett
*Drumtochty Castle
*Drumtochty Forest

References